Syneos Health Lawsuit: Securities, Employment, and Arbitration

Syneos Health, the clinical research company based in Morrisville, North Carolina, is defending an active securities fraud class action in federal court in New York that survived a motion to dismiss in March 2026, alongside a handful of employment cases that have largely been resolved and a closed commercial arbitration with a former client. The Syneos Health lawsuit drawing the most attention is Kempen International Funds v. Syneos Health, Inc., brought by Dutch investment funds who allege the company and four former executives inflated backlog figures and hid operational problems while telling investors the business was booming during the pandemic.

The Securities Class Action Investors Are Pursuing

The case sits in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York as Kempen International Funds v. Syneos Health, Inc., No. 1:23-cv-08848, and covers investors who bought shares between September 9, 2020, and November 3, 2022. The individual defendants are four former senior executives: former CEO Alistair Macdonald, his successor Michelle Keefe, former CFO Jason Meggs, and Paul Colvin.¹

The complaint says that starting in September 2020, Syneos assured investors the pandemic’s worst effects had “bottomed out” and that pent-up demand was driving the business.² Investors claim that behind the reassuring public message, the company was hiding several serious problems:

Business development was impaired by workforce reductions, leadership turnover, and pandemic-driven labor problems.³
Recent acquisitions had not been absorbed, producing what investors called a “bloated and confused organizational structure.”³
The company lacked the data visualization and modeling tools competitors were using as clinical trials moved toward remote monitoring.³
Backlog figures, book-to-bill ratios, and net new business awards were padded by more than $500 million through reimbursable expenses the company was unlikely ever to collect.³

The amended complaint also alleges misstatements about the quality of Syneos’s work, including late-reported quality issues that were not communicated to clients on time, ineffective internal audits, and quality standards that were not embedded in day-to-day operations.⁴

The Disclosure Timeline and Stock Drops

Investors point to four disclosures in 2022 that they say revealed the truth. On February 17, 2022, Syneos said reimbursable expenses would likely never recover to pre-pandemic levels and flagged $3.8 billion of backlog as at risk; the stock fell 4.8%. On August 2, 2022, the company reported a 34% decline in net new business awards and cut 2022 revenue projections by $185 million, and shares dropped 17.6%. A September 13, 2022 disclosure of weaker-than-expected book-to-bill guidance sent shares down 13.6%. The largest fall came on November 4, 2022, after Syneos reported an 87% decline in reimbursable expenses and a 0.18x book-to-bill ratio in its Clinical Solutions segment; the stock lost 46.2%.⁵ Bloomberg Law reported the shares fell roughly 77% from peak to below $23.⁶

Where the Case Stands

On March 31, 2026, Judge Arun Subramanian denied the defendants’ motion to dismiss in large part, letting the bulk of the securities claims move forward.⁷ The court held that investors had plausibly alleged Syneos added “hundreds of millions of dollars to reported backlog in violation of Syneos’s own stated methodology.” The judge found a “strong inference of fraudulent intent” resting on three points: unusually large insider stock sales by all four individual defendants during the class period, internal warnings from senior managers and business-unit CFOs that the practices could amount to fraud, and the suspicious timing of the executives’ departures.⁸ The case is now in discovery.⁴

Employment Cases Filed Against Syneos

Several employment lawsuits have moved through the courts alongside the securities case. Most are resolved.

COVID-19 Vaccine Policy

In 2023, former employees filed Morris v. Syneos Health, Inc., No. 5:23-cv-00304, in the Eastern District of North Carolina, alleging religious and disability discrimination tied to the company’s September 2021 vaccination policy.⁹ Some employees had received temporary exemptions on disability or religious grounds, but Syneos concluded in December 2021 that the accommodations created an undue hardship, and unvaccinated workers were terminated on January 31, 2022.¹⁰ Lead plaintiff Tina Morris was ordered to individual arbitration in September 2023, and in September 2024 Judge Terrence W. Boyle granted in part and denied in part Syneos’s motion to compel arbitration, partially dismiss claims, and strike class allegations. The parties reported a settlement and the case was terminated on September 17, 2025.

FMLA Retaliation Claim

Andrea Bigelow filed a putative class action in the Eastern District of North Carolina (Bigelow v. Syneos Health, LLC, No. 5:20-cv-28) alleging the company had a policy of denying promotions to workers who had taken Family and Medical Leave Act leave. Bigelow said she was passed over after returning from maternity leave in 2019 and that management confirmed the policy directly.¹¹ In August 2020, the court dismissed the FMLA interference claim with prejudice, reasoning that Bigelow had taken her leave and been restored to her position. The court also struck the class allegations as an impermissible “fail-safe” class and denied leave to amend as futile.¹²

Scurlock Labor Class Action

Reginald Scurlock v. Syneos Health US, Inc., No. 2:22-cv-09444, was filed in the Central District of California. The plaintiff filed a notice of settlement in February 2024 and sought preliminary approval in July 2024. Final approval followed, and the case was terminated on October 22, 2025. The settlement’s dollar amount and terms were not disclosed in the available court records.¹³

Commercial Arbitration With FSD Pharma

In January 2022, Syneos initiated arbitration against FSD Pharma seeking roughly $3.9 million in damages, interest, and legal expenses tied to clinical trial enrollment work for FSD Pharma’s Phase 2 drug candidate, FSD201. The trial ran across 35 sites in North and South America and was terminated in August 2021 after missing recruitment goals.¹⁴

FSD Pharma countersued, arguing Syneos had not used “commercially reasonable efforts.” When the three-arbitrator panel issued its award in May 2023, both parties claimed victory. According to an SEC filing by FSD Pharma, the panel awarded Syneos about $1.7 million in damages plus interest for unpaid invoices, well short of the $3.9 million sought, and denied Syneos’s request for attorneys’ fees. The panel found Syneos had failed to use commercially reasonable efforts, writing that “given Syneos Health’s poor success at patient enrollment despite its self-described ‘extraordinary’ efforts, it was not commercially reasonable for it to continue to throw good money after bad in circumstances where the money in question was FSD’s.”¹⁵ Syneos publicly stated it had been awarded $3,456,409.68 and that the tribunal found the company used “the required efforts.”¹⁴ The official award remains confidential under American Arbitration Association rules.

Why the Executives Are “Former” and Syneos Is Private

The securities case is playing out against a corporate transition. On May 10, 2023, Syneos announced a deal to be taken private by Elliott Investment Management, Patient Square Capital, and Veritas Capital in a transaction valued at about $7.1 billion including debt. Shareholders received $43.00 per share in cash, a 24% premium to the unaffected closing price.¹⁶ The sale closed on September 28, 2023, and the stock was delisted from Nasdaq.¹⁷ All four individual defendants had left the company before the deal closed: Macdonald resigned in April 2022, Meggs in March 2023, with Keefe having succeeded Macdonald as CEO in between.¹⁸ The securities suit alleges each of them sold the “lion’s share” of their stock during the class period in volumes far above their prior trading history, taking in profits above their annual salaries.⁷

Shares had traded above $100 in late 2021 before dropping below $26 by late 2022.¹⁹ With the company now private and the securities class action in discovery, the next major step in the case will likely be class certification proceedings before Judge Subramanian.

1
CourtListener. Kempen International Funds v. Syneos Health, Inc., No. 1:23-cv-08848
2
Newsfile Corp. SYNH Class Action Notice: Kessler Topaz Meltzer Check LLP Reminds Syneos Health Shareholders of Securities Fraud Class Action Lawsuit
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KTMC. Syneos Health, Inc.
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Newsfile Corp. SYNH Class Action Notice
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Bloomberg Law. Syneos Execs Sued for Misleading Investors Before Stock Drop
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Bloomberg Law. Syneos Health Investors Advance Allegations of Inflated Backlog
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DiCello Levitt. DiCello Levitt Defeats Motion to Dismiss in Syneos Health Securities Litigation
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CourtListener. Morris v. Syneos Health, Inc., No. 5:23-cv-00304
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Trellis Law. Morris v. Syneos Health, Inc.
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ClassAction.org. Class Action Claims Syneos Health Refuses to Promote Employees Who Took Protected FMLA Leave
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CaseMine. Bigelow v. Syneos Health, LLC, No. 5:20-CV-28-D
13
CourtListener. Reginald Scurlock v. Syneos Health US, Inc., No. 2:22-cv-09444
14
MM&M. Both Syneos Health and FSD Pharma Claim Wins in Fight Over Trial Recruiting
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SEC. FSD Pharma Inc. Press Release (Ex. 99.1)
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SEC. Syneos Health Announces Definitive Agreement
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DandoDiary (Complaint PDF). Syneos Health Securities Fraud Complaint
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Healthcare Dive. Syneos Acquisition Take-Private CRO